Should we forgive Bruce?
In Allison Bechdel's Funhome, the character of Bruce, her father, is portrayed as a morally complex person and foil/anti-hero to Allison. He is portrayed though several different versions of Allison. when she is a child, when she has grown up and left for college, and after his death when she is reflecting on her relationship with him. Bruce and Allison's relationship is a complex and multilayered one, from his strange and conflicting sense of style as for how Allison should look and dress, to his cold exterior that pushes him away from the rest of his family. Both we and Allison know of a potential explanation for his distant attitude, Bruce has been closeted in terms of his sexuality for his whole life. This is contrasted with Allison, who comes out while at college and is able to live as who she is. Allison finds old photos of him dressing in a non-conforming way, and her mother confirms that Bruce was having an affair with young boys. When Allison is a teenager, her father has charges brought to him for giving a 17-year old boy alcohol, it is also heavily implied that they had sex. A big part of Funhome is whether or not we and Allison should forgive Bruce for his parenting and actions.
At a first glance, the answer for whether or not we should forgive Bruce is no. Bruce very clearly grooms a minor and is given a very light punishment for his actions. Coupled with his emotionally detached parenting style and it is very easy to paint a picture of him as an a sociopathic groomer. It could be also argued that Bruce used his status as a white middle class male to get a lighter sentence, only having to go to therapy instead of facing jail time. Even Bruce seems to agree with this, saying "I'm not good like you" to Allison. But despite this, both the readers and Allison still sympathize with Bruce. Both because of his life in the closet as well as the good memories she had with him from her childhood. Her discovery of his old life before he had kids. Her intellectual connection as well also paints a nicer picture of him, as he struggles to explain his sexuality through a cryptic conversation about Earthly Paradise. This image of an old man struggling to explain himself to his daughter is certainly more flattering than the image of Bruce the statutory rapist, but is it the truth?
Both the answer that I came to and the answer it seems like Allison comes to is that the truth of who Bruce is lies in both answers. Bruce clearly made some very bad and possibly illegal decisions, but that doesn't discount his experiences living a closeted life in rural Pennsylvania. But at the same time, his experiences don't excuse his emotional detachment and crimes. Allison doesn't seem to fully come to peace with her judgement of him. This is also reflection in his death. Did he commit suicide after going through a divorce and having his identity leaked? Or was he tragically taken from the world after just being able to come out to his daughter. Bruce's identity, crimes, and death may never be fully explained, but it doesn't discount the feelings he had with Allison.
You bring up a very good point about the grayness in the morality behind Bruce's character. I think that is part of what is so compelling about the book, because the complexity of Bruce's life and his both cold/detached parenting style yet sweet, talking-about-books relationship with Alison make it very hard to make a clear judgement about him after his death. This reminds me of the last line of the novel, where she says Bruce was "there to catch me when I leapt." Ironically, if her coming out is when she "leapt," then Bruce was far from being there to catch her and instead presumably committed suicide. I agree that the extent of his crimes was glossed over both in his punishment and their mention in the novel, which adds onto the difficulty.
ReplyDeleteI think your right that Bruce's character becomes an increasingly difficult one to judge as the book goes on. We see many layers of suffering, crime, and action that make his character hard to categorize as just good or bad. You did a great job coming up with your own thoughts on the character, and I think your right that in the end its difficult to fully sympathize with his character given the actions he has taken.
ReplyDeleteI think you capture the complexity of how Bruce is depicted versus how his actions might be judged with less bias. I agree that because we know more about his problems and the good things he has down, readers may perceive his actions more lightly, but ultimately, he did commit the crime and other people most likely suffered because of it. We see his story and his side into account, but not the side of those molested and how that may have affected their lives.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting how as a reader we sometimes feel sympathetic for Bruce. I think that if we had heard about Bruce's court case with the two boys on the news without having the context we have for his actions we would feel very different. Knowing the backstory of Bruce's struggle and forced concealment of his sexuality I think we are less immediate to jump to the conclusion that he is a wholly terrible person. Without the context the reader has, I don't think we would be so sympathetic.
ReplyDeleteIt's an extremely tricky topic to work through, and it is clear that the community in Beech Creek in 1980 was more interested in "sweeping under the rug" issues like Bruce's indiscretions with minors--to avoid shame and discomfort for everyone involved. But it is possible to maintain a balance betwen condemning Bruce's actions in strong terms and also to acknowledge that the prejudices and compulsory heterosexuality that prevailed in his community at the time played a significant role in forcing Bruce into the surreptitious, shameful kinds of relationships Alison discovers later. Some of the most difficult and hard-to-answer moments in the text happen when Alison ponders how her own behavior might have been different if she hadn't been able to find a community where she could live openly. It's certainly not a given or inevitable that she would have acted as Bruce did, but she does acknowledge the possibility that, absent a supportive community, she can't really say how she would have behaved. This might lead the rest of us to check our impulses toward outright condemnation. Some measure of sympathy and compassion is in order, and we might say that the real "villain" in the story is the prevailing homophobia of the culture.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some very interesting points. I definitely got the sense that Allison had forgiven her father because of the struggles he had with his sexuality. To be completely honest, I sometimes even got frustrated reading Allison's perspective because I felt like she was being too forgiving. While it's important to understand Bruce struggled being gay in an environment that wasn't accepting, I also think it's a slippery slope to use those issues to excuse his behaviors. In my opinion, I don't think Bruce should have had children because he wasn't mentally prepared and steady enough to properly raise another human being.
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